


And the Sleepless Night

by 0hHeyThereBigBadWolf



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Multi, OT3, Pre-Relationship, Sleeplessness, Sleepy Cuddles, The Library ships it, midnight snacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 17:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12017265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf/pseuds/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf
Summary: During yet another night of being unable to sleep, Jacob decides he might as well get something to eat...except that he's not the only Librarian that can't sleep, and there's a reason for it. The Library provides for its Librarians.





	And the Sleepless Night

Jacob sighed as he got out of bed, giving up on going to sleep for the night yet again.

This was absolutely pitiful. He was a grown-ass man, he should be able to go to sleep at night without someone around. In his head, he silently cursed Ezekiel and Cassandra both. The two of them were...insidious. That was a good word for it. Insidious, seeping through the cracks in his armour and winding themselves close and tight beneath his skin where he couldn't remove them without causing himself far more pain than it was worth.

It had started long before Peru, but he hadn't noticed it until afterwards, when they left. After months of sharing hotel rooms and tents and even a bed on one memorable occasion where there was literally not a single other room available, Jacob had grown used to having them sleeping near him. He was so accustomed to the sound of Ezekiel's feather-light snoring and Cassandra's soft sighs that he actually felt lonely when he tried to sleep on his own. He liked being able to hold his breath and hear the two of them, and if they weren't there, his bedroom felt unnervingly still and quiet. It was pathetic.

He shuffled down the hallway to the kitchen, figuring he might as well grab a snack and then try to read himself to sleep again. But much to his surprise, when he turned the corner into the kitchen, he was met with the sight of Cassandra already sitting at the table with a glass of milk, trying to quietly open a package of Oreos; whoever had made that damn plastic wrap stuff was the bane of sneaky children everywhere. Couldn't open the damned things without waking everybody in the house, he knew from personal experience. "Need a hand, darlin'?" he asked quietly.

Cassandra startled with a little squeak and a loud crackling of plastic. "Jeez, you scared me. A little warning next time," she muttered. Her gaze flicked downwards, and then she hastily dropped her gaze back to her hands, blushing a little in the dimness. Jacob belatedly realised that he'd forgotten to put a shirt on when he got up.

"Sorry. Next time I'll try to shuffle a little louder," he grumbled back, then took a paring knife out of the rack and walked over to the table. "Here, like this." He cut across both ends of the package, then slid the knife across the top, effectively peeling the wrapper off. "Learned that trick when I was nine," he said knowledgeably as he returned the paring knife to the rack and sat down at the table with her. "Just tip the rest of 'em in a Ziploc, they'll be fine."

"Well, well, aren't you just a regular Oreo thief," Cassandra teased, then swatted at his hand when he reached across the table and dunked half a cookie into the mug full of milk beside her elbow. "Hey, get your own. Milk thief, too."

"Someone say dashing anti-hero Ezekiel Jones?" asked the actual thief as he sauntered into the kitchen. How anybody could saunter whilst wearing pajamas with Looney Tunes characters on them, Jacob had no idea.

Jacob rolled his eyes. "No, she said 'thief,'" he replied.

The younger man shrugged. "Eh, same thing. Nice tattoo, Stone," he added as he walked around the table to sit on Cassandra's other side; Jacob showed him a very special finger.

"Boys, if you can't play nicely, you can't play together," Cassandra said in an entirely solemn voice...which lasted for about three seconds before she cracked a grin and handed them each another cookie, having become de facto delegator, given that she was sitting in the middle. "So...you guys can't sleep, either?" she asked after a moment, then stutteringly added, "Because I was having some, uhm, weird dreams earlier, wondered if either of you had the same problem."

Jacob nearly winced at her God-awful attempts at lying. He didn't know why she even bothered, she was no good at it, especially trying to lie to them, who knew her and her mile-high tells better than anybody. He didn't answer the question, though, just shrugged and reached over to dunk another cookie in the mug. She swatted at his hand again.

"Well, I dunno about you two, but it was way too lonesome in my room for me," Ezekiel said, wholly blasé, halving an Oreo and licking the crème out of the middle.

Cassandra let out a weak little laugh, staring down into her mug, relieved she wasn't the first to have said it. "Me, too. I...I miss having you guys around." Her eyes cut sideways to Ezekiel. "Even if you do hog the covers."

The thief put on his best 'appalled' face, pressing a hand over his heart as if physically wounded by her words and how dare she implicate that he would ever do such a dishonorable thing. "I do no such thing!" he gasped.

As one, they both turned their heads to look at Jacob. He grunted and broke another cookie in half. "It's quieter without ya," he mumbled at last. It wasn't a lie. It  _was_ quieter without them...he just hadn't said that 'quieter' necessarily meant 'better.' It was about as close to admitting that he missed having both of them around that he was willing to come.

Cassandra's smile faded out of her face with a dejected little, "Oh," and he wished that he wasn't such a stubborn ass all the time.

Ezekiel kicked his shin under the table.

"I'm gonna head back to bed. Goodnight," Jacob muttered, pushing back from the table and padding out of the kitchen. He paused mid-step down the hallway and turned to stare at a door he was almost certain hadn't been there when he got up. It didn't look familiar. Had it only just appeared? He stood there staring at it for a moment, debating whether or not it would be safe to open. In a magic Library that owned a room of eternal fire and another with a literal sun, it was a fair question. He'd also seen enough slasher flicks to know that opening a mysterious closed door in the middle of the night in your pajamas was a real good way to end up the first guy dead.

He didn't even notice that Cassandra and Ezekiel were both leaving the kitchen until the mathematician asked, "Is there something wrong with the door?"

"Was it here before?" he asked, turning to look at the pair of them. "I...I don't think this door was here before."

Cassandra frowned. "Now that I think about it...I don't think that it was," she murmured. "But that happens all the time, doesn't it?"

"I guess so..."

Ezekiel rolled his eyes. "If it's that big of a deal, just open the bloody thing," he muttered, reaching past Jacob and pulling open the new door. All at once, he went very still and let out a quiet, "Oh," of his own.

Jacob peered around the thief and winced.

The Library had provided. Behind the mystery door was a new bedroom. A new bedroom that hosted a very comfy-looking bed that was certainly big enough to hold three people. And with an extra layer of covers in case one of those people was prone to blanket-hogging. For a moment, they stood there at an impasse in the doorway, neither willing to make the first move, but finally Cassandra rolled her eyes. "Oh, for God's sake." She pushed her way past them, climbed up the middle of the bed, slid under the covers, and looked at them expectantly.

Jacob actually laughed a little. Cassandra might pussyfoot around damn near every uncomfortable subject there was, but he could at least trust her to be direct in this. She'd done the same thing in Beijing, when they'd gotten stuck with a room that had only one bed, except that she'd called them both immature idiots and told them to get their asses in bed already.

That stubborn-ass part of him tried to resist, balking at the idea of giving in and admitting that he needed these two to sleep at night, he was  _not_ dependent on anybody like that...but hell, he was so tired. He hadn't slept a night through this week.

_A sleepless Librarian is a careless Librarian after all..._

He came around the left side of the bed, pulled back the blankets, and got in next to her. Immediately, Cassandra turned over on her side facing him and scooted forward until her head rested on his chest, one arm going around his waist as she threw a leg over his. Almost automatically, Jacob settled his arm around her back. He'd gotten used to this, too. After a lifetime of people never wanting to touch her, from parents who thought she might break to peers that thought her illness and strangeness was contagious, she had a habit of being very cuddly in bed. And once she got a hold, she held on  _hard,_ like she was scared she might never get another chance. He didn't mind that, either. God, he was pitiful.

"Now I do feel left out," Ezekiel said from the other side of the bed.

"Promise not to try anything?" Jacob asked without opening his eyes to look at the other man.

"I promise to be good."

"Not what I asked."

He could practically  _hear_ the thief's smirk. "You're pretty good at this game, cowboy. Alright. I promise not to try anything."

"Then c'mon." He moved his arm from Cassandra's back.

The bedsheets rustled, and Jacob opened one eye lazily. Ezekiel had curled against Cassandra's back; they were almost the exact same height, so spooning was easy for the two of them. The thief had put one arm over her waist, and since she was pressed so close against Jacob, Ezekiel's hand ended up resting against the historian's side, too, fingertips brushing against the edge of his hipbone. And that was okay, too, because it felt far too good to be wrong. He closed his eyes, hand now resting over the back of Ezekiel's neck.

Insidious little sneaks, the both of them.


End file.
